Early yesterday morning the wind shifted to the Northwest leaving my beautiful beach side anchorage totally exposed. It was pretty uncomfortable and not conducive to working so after my first round of early morning calls I weighed anchor. It was a little bit of a challenge given the conditions, but I left the engine in gear just a little to give me some leverage. After a few minutes I had it up and was off. Of course since the wind was from the Northwest - once again - no sailing - but I got some quality battery charging time :-)

I was having a great time - enjoying my little autopilot and the beautiful day. A few minutes later I glanced over my shoulder - and there was a huge freighter coming up behind me! He was pretty far to the port - but still I didn't even hear him. That was a bit of a wake up call! Those tows make a lot of noise - but I had no idea the freighter's would be so silent.

I arrived back in the peaceful Smack Bayou around 9:30. I had a busy work day and called it quits around 4 p.m. Except for the time I'm on calls, I'm pretty much out working from the cockpit all day. I've fashioned a little lap desk from the the cutting board that covers the stove. Hey everything around here needs to be multi-purpose! It's cooler outside and very peaceful and most of the time there is a breeze. When I do get too hot, I can get in the water for a few minutes - although that's a bit scary. There is all kinds of stuff in that water - from jellyfish, fish, manta rays, dolphins. I learned that I'm supposed to walk all around the deck and look in the water before getting in. Another lesson learned - after a close encounter with a jelly fi

After work I took the dinghy to a distant shore for a long walk. There were lots of fellows fishing there. I saw one guy landing a pretty good sized Spanish Mackerel. He told me he'd been fishing since 4 a.m. and it was his 6th fish. Seemed like a lot of effort to me. A group of boy scouts was unloading from some boats and headed into the woods. I gave their leader a little heads up about the bobcat and panther I'd seen a few days ago :-)

I ended up rowing the dinghy about a mile back to the boat - just to get more exercise. Then had a lot of fun "racing" dinghies with my friend DJ, although it wasn't really much of a race as his dinghy is twice as fast as mine :-)

I'm headed over to Panama City Marina tomorrow. I need to pick up my new iphone, get a good charge on the house batteries, do laundry, and a little shopping. I've arranged to rent a car and pick up a little Honda generator - and I'm going to get myself some decent saltwater fishing gear, and a snorkel and fins too.